


Hat Man and Star Lady

by Mertiya



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: And Margaret tries to flirt without realizing it, Awkward Romance, Everyone is happy and no one knows what to do with their feelings, F/M, Fluff, In which Barbossa tries to flirt, Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-07 22:25:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11068347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Margaret Smyth receives an unexpected gift.





	Hat Man and Star Lady

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of thanks and credit to Rastaban as usual; we spent two or three hours discussing the Margaret/Barbossa romance and fleshing out Margaret together the evening after she saw the movie.

            Hat Man was back. Well, that presumably wasn’t his actual name, but it tended to be how Margaret thought of him. He hadn’t introduced himself, and as he unfailingly arrived in a huge, wide-brimmed hat with a large fancy feather—although occasionally the feather did change colors—‘Hat Man’ seemed a natural choice of epithet.

            He had been wandering through her shop every few months for the past year or so, and Margaret quite enjoyed his company. They had conversations about Margaret’s chosen profession, during which Hat Man was quite willing to listen to her expertise, despite the misfortune of her sex, which was in Margaret’s experience a vanishingly rare quality in men. They also talked of obscure vocabulary words, and Margaret told him stories from the latest novels she had read, while he told her sailor’s myths and tales he had picked up from all over.

            He was probably a pirate. You didn’t get many honest seamen in Margaret’s shop, because honest seamen purchased their navigational charts from honest businessmen on the main thoroughfare, not women squashed into tiny little hole-in-the-wall shops whose windows were tinted yellow with age. Never mind that Margaret’s charts were the best in the business. That did not factor into most people’s estimation when held against the mere fact of her sex.

            Margaret was amused and slightly perplexed when today, instead of entering immediately, Hat Man hovered around the door of her shop for nearly half an hour. It was early enough in the morning for her to still have little custom and plenty of work to be getting done, so she waited, but she was beginning to think she was going to have to go out and tell him that the shop was open (although the lights were clearly on and the tiny, handwritten sign in the window should have been informative enough), when he finally shoved the door open so hard it banged into the wall and strode in.

            _Should I tell him that I can actually see through my front window?_ Margaret wondered, as Hat Man somehow succeeded in swaggering nervously over to her front counter.

            “Maggie!” he exclaimed, as if she weren’t the only person who worked in this particular location, and she had to smile.

            “It has been some time,” she began, wondering if that would properly convey the oddly warm feeling she got when he entered, but before she could say anything else, he put something down in front of her.

            “I got ye a bit of a present.”

            Her planned speech derailed, Margaret paused and looked down at the little oilskin packet. Considering the last time she had been given a gift was when her brother was alive, she found herself rather startled and a little unsure how to react. “Thank you?” she hazarded, turning it over in her hands as if she could see through the outer wrappings to whatever was beneath. It was pliant to the touch, and she could hear paper crinkling beneath it.

            “Go on then, open it. ’Tis what it’s for.”

            Undoing the string, she unwound the waterproof covering and began to unfold the soft pages within. The thin writing was in a language she didn’t recognize, but the lines and positions were as familiar as her own hand. “Star charts?” she asked.

            “Aye, I picked them up from a…trader, and, well, I thought of you.” He shuffled nervously.

            “Where are these _from_?” She turned them over in her hands. These had not been composed by any European hand, she was certain.

            “Mayhap the East, I’d wager, though I cannot tell ye for certain.”

            Margaret did not know what to say. None of her words seemed sufficient for the magnitude of this gift. No one had ever given her anything like it: they had given her dresses and ribbons and bows and fripperies, which she did not care for, or they had given her books, which she did, but nothing so thoughtful as this. Nothing so rare or precious or specific to _her_. She swallowed.

            “Do ye like it?” Hat Man asked, sounding hesitant, and Margaret finally managed a nod, then stood from behind the counter, stretching up onto her tiptoes, and pressed a kiss at the corner of his mouth, still nodding. Still lost for words. Her cheeks were wet. “Oh, gods’ blood, I did not intend for ye to cry,” her benefactor said, sounding thunderstruck. “I just thought as ye might like ’em.”

            Taking a long, deep breath, Margaret smoothed her skirts and reached for a handkerchief, with which she dabbed at her eyes. “I am a fool,” she managed finally, as he leaned forward across the counter awkwardly, “but any words I could bring to bear are—insufficient. This is—” She shook her head in quiet wonder. “Thank you.”

            “I can procure ye more if that’s where yer heart lies,” he offered. “’Twas meant to be a trinket, nothing more.”

            “You are the truest friend I ever had,” Margaret told him. On a sudden impulse, she laid a hand clumsily on top of his. “Would you like to go out with me tonight to see the stars? If we get quite out of the city to Ramtop Hill, they are clear. I have an old telescope we can use to study them, and I can show you my favorites.”

            “I be no one’s true friend,” fumbled Hat Man, as if in protest, but his hand turned over and he closed his fingers over hers.   “But if ye’ll have me then—aye—I’ll come with you.”

            “Good. It’s settled then.” Oddly, she almost wanted to reach out and touch his lips, but she could not quite figure out why, and it seemed a bit forward still, so she just smiled instead and squeezed his hand.

            Hat Man’s eyes crinkled as he grinned, and he brought her hand to his lips gently. “Settled indeed, though none of the stars will scintillate as bright as yer eyes, my dear.”

            “Scintillate is a good word,” Margaret said meditatively. “I like scintillate. Oh—and thank you, of course.”

            For a moment he seemed almost at a loss, then he chuckled, reached out, and tugged a stray curl. “I’ll see ye tonight, then.”

            As he strode out of the shop, Margaret felt her heart flutter oddly, and then rise in her chest, but she did not watch for long. There were star charts to be perused.


End file.
